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Eggs, Curried

A stew of onions, curry powder, beef broth, thickened with flour or cornstarch, served with sliced hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Eggs, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curry base

  1. Fry the sliced onions in butter until brown.

  2. Add curry powder and beef broth, then stew until the onions are tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the mixture with flour or cornstarch.

  2. Slice the hard-boiled eggs and add them to the stew.

  3. Let the eggs warm in the stew, but do not boil.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + beeftop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Onions
Soften and sweeten as they stew, forming the flavour base of the sauce.
Butter
Fat that browns the onions and carries the curry flavour.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma that defines the dish.
Flour or cornstarch
Thickens the broth into a body-rich sauce that clings to the eggs.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide the main protein and soft texture in the stew.

The step that matters

Warming the eggs without boiling. Boiling the stew can toughen the egg whites and make the yolks grainy or rubbery. Gentle heat warms the eggs through while keeping them tender and intact.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beef, flour, egg):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, flour, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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